Erica
Chenoweth, “Did the Vatican Just Throw Out the Just War Doctrine?” 4-21

John Dear, “The Church’s Turn Toward
Nonviolence” 4-28

Recent Critiques of Just War Doctrines 2013-16

Meagher, Killing from the
Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War

Editor’s
Comment

Dick, LTE on Chenoweth, Dear, Meagher

Reviews, Google Search

President Obama on Just War, Including His Nobel Peace Prize
Speech

Newsletter #1 Contents

Editor’s Corkscrew: Our two
most urgent concerns for the planet are nuclear war and CO2(and methane)/warming. The Just War Doctrineis used to justify the former and in ceaseless
wars to distract us from the latter.

Ironical Corkscrew long in use: In contrast, the principles of the
Doctrine can function to critically examine a specific war.

I’ve just
completed work on an important new book on war by Robert Emmet Meagher
titled Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War. The
book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas, who extols
Meagher’s transgression of standard disciplinary boundaries in his pursuit
of the roots of our collective failure to address the profound moral injuries
experienced by warriors:

I am
convinced [Meagher’s] emphasis on what
war does to combatants is a decisive intervention that helps us better
understand the morality of war. As a person committed to Christian
nonviolence, I fear that many assume a commitment to nonviolence carries
with it a negative judgment against those who participate in war. Meagher
challenges that presumption by helping us see that those who dissent from
war and those who have participated in war share more in common than the
stereotype of either would suggest. That war wounds us morally is not only
true of those who prosecute the violence of war; it is true of all whom
war touches.

One
of the most provocative arguments, pursued by Meagher throughout the book, is
that the Christian church’s widely celebrated doctrine of just war, though
conceived honestly enough as a way of constraining the evils of war,
has functioned in the main to conceal from us the troubling injuries suffered
by those who sacrifice their normal unwillingness to kill. Such a claim
turns by no means on the naive suspicion of an ivory-tower academic squeamish
about bloodshed, but rather on testimony after testimony of decorated soldiers
who, having returned from war, have shown extraordinary courage in writing
honestly about their wounds. This is an
anti-war book that is underwritten by a life’s work of honoring the experience
of soldiers.

Just war theory is a dead letter. This is
the argument advanced, if not proven, in the preceding chapters. It was
never more than a theory, and at its worst it was a lie, a deadly lie. It
promised at least the possibility of war without sin, war without
criminality, war without guilt or shame, war in which men would risk their
lives but not their souls. At its headiest, it promised war in which men
would win eternal life, and now, in the fullness of wartime, these same
promises have been extended to women. Whether or not these promises were
first or ever made in good faith is something we can never know, and it
doesn’t matter. What we can know is that they have not been kept. We know
this from experience, the experience of war, the killing lab in which the
theory of just war has been tested for sixteen centuries. It is time to
declare its death and to write an autopsy.

Meagher’s
book deserves a very wide reading, and I’m happy to report that it has already
received significant pre-orders, and more endorsements than any book I’ve ever
had the privilege to edit.

DICK, LTE on Chenoweth, Dear, and Meagher

From Just War to Just Peace

Dick Bennett

Thanks toThe Free Weeklyfor publishing two articles on
Just-War Theory (Erica Chenoweth, 4-21; John Dear 4-28: www.freeweekly.com).
They inform us of an extraordinarily significant new initiative to create a
peaceful world—the rejection of the Just War Theory by the Catholic Church, and
the creation of a Just Peace Theory. The problem? The old Theory,
intended to prevent wars, increased them in number and ferocity, and offered
little guidance for the conduct of war or for life after war, particularly
regarding “moral injury.”

Pope Francis, via the Catholic
Church’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, along with Pax Christi
International, hosted a conference on the theme of “Nonviolence and Just
Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to
Nonviolence.” The conference members recommended: 1) rejection of
Just War Doctrine, and 2) a new encyclical committed to the nonviolence of
Jesus. The Vatican’s conference to critique its 1700 years-old
doctrine was surprising to most; its recommendation to the Pope for a
drastically new encyclical was astonishing. Together they will
inspire radically new thinking about war and violence not only by Catholics but
by all Christians, and perhaps many others. A new encyclical asserting
the nonviolence of Jesus as central Catholic doctrine will be astounding, for
it will possibly lead Catholics and millions of Christians for the first time
to search seriously for nonviolent alternatives to armed
aggression.

The conference and recommendation arose I
expect also from a new criticism of Just War doctrine. The
2014 book by Robert Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury
and Just War,would, the
author writes, “pull up, from its roots, the just war tradition, to reveal its
deadly legacy [“the deceptive and destructive core of the Christian just war
doctrine”], and to point to a future beyond just war” to “just peace,” for “a
planet ever smaller, more precious, and more imperiled” by nuclear war and
atmospheric warming.

Meagher employs an aspect of war as
old as war itself and yet seeming new by its long neglect: “moral
injury.” He opens his book with facts of 20thcentury war slaughters and US military
suicides today. During WWI 420,000 British killed, a million
French, two million Germans. In 2012 an average of 33 US soldiers on
active duty killed themselves each month; discharged soldiers in February
2013 killed themselves 22 a day, in “the lamentable legacy of a long tradition
of justified war and inevitable moral injury.” His point is that no war
can be justified; no war is “good and right, even virtuous and meritorious,
pleasing in the sight of God.” Just War theory functions as a rationalization
for war, and what war does to the combatants further exposes its failure.

To make his case Meagher spends
five of his eight chapters “tracing the roots and branches of our Western
understanding of war and, more pointedly, of just war and moral injury” in
order to say how we might end our ceaseless wars.

The author is Professor of Humanities,
Hampshire College, and his most recent book isHerakles Gone Mad: Rethinking
Heroism in an Age of Endless War.

REVIEWS OF KILLING FROM THE
INSIDE OUT, Google Search, May 20, 2016, first page [plus some additions from Dick]

Just war
doctrine was never more than a theory and at its worst it was a lie, a deadly
lie. It promised at least the possibility of war without sin, war without
criminality, war without guilt or shame, war in which men and women would risk
their lives but not their souls or their humanity. This theory has been tested
for sixteen centuries, and has failed. It is time to declare its death, write
its autopsy, reveal its deadly legacy, and point to a future beyond just
war. ​

Apr 30, 2015
- REVIEW ESSAY -. KILLING FROM
THE. INSIDE OUT. Moral Injury and Just War. [Lt. Col. Douglas A. Pryer, U.S. Army,
praises the book. –Dick.] Pryer
currently serves as a J-5 planner in the Middle East Directorate of
the Joint Staff. He holds a Master of Military Art and Science (Military
History) from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and has
published one book and numerous essays regarding warfare’s human
domain.

Armies
know all about killing. It is what they do, and ours does it more effectively
than most. We are painfully coming to realize, however, that we are also
especially good at killing our own "from the inside out," silently,
invisibly. In every major war since Korea, more of our veterans have taken
their lives than have lost them in combat. The latest research, rooted in...more

Dec 11, 2009
- OSLO -- President Barack Obama accepted
the Nobel Peace Prize Thursday ... of armed might in the service of a "just war," a
sharp change in emphasis from ... core principles of
a more traditionally conservative foreign policy.

Dec 10, 2009
- the WHITE HOUSEPresident Barack Obama ...
Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize ... The
concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only
when certain .... by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign
to local cultures or ...

If you need to be
removed from this list or want it to go to another address, just reply to this
email and I'll get you fixed up.

Veggie and Vegan Potluck

Wed, May 11, 6:00 pm @ OMNI

A food-friendly event
with delicious dishes every second Wednesday. .
If you wish, provide your recipe, or at least its name and main
ingredients. Make a special sign or announcement if your dish is vegan or
gluten free.

We want to meet you, at a place and time where
we can talk with others not only about recipes, nutrition, and health, but
about care for other species, for the environment, and the climate. Hope to see you!

As always, folks who
don't identify as vegetarians are welcome at our potlucks.

Car directions to
OMNI: Take College to Harold St (at Flying Burrito), turn east (right if you're
heading north). Go one block to Lee and turn left. Go one block to Bertha and we’re the gray
brick on the corner, 2nd house south of Liquor World.

OMNI CLIMATE CHANGE
LOBBY meets at 7pm also at OMNI. This
group is pushing hard for the “fee-dividend” solution to fossil fuels
emissions.

VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER

What’s at stake: “What began as a desire to improve my health
opened the door to realize the tremendous positive impact that veganism has on
the environment and animal lives.
There’s no single life choice that creates such massive benefits for
human health, environmental sustainability, and relieves the suffering of
animals.” Jason Wrobel, author of Eaternity: More Than 150 Deliciously Easy
Vegan Recipes for a Long, Healthy, Satisfied, Joyful Life, in VEGNEWS (April 2016).

This newsletter
especially focuses on the significant connections of vegetarianism/veganism to
education, industrial meat production, nutrition, health, animal rights,
overpopulation, wars, the 6th extinction, and most of all, to which all other
factors either contribute or resist, the catastrophe of climate change. As in all of OMNI’s activities, we seek a
culture of peace, justice, and ecology, to make the changes necessary to end
wars and slow warming.

MAY IS: International
Respect for Chickens Month

VEGETARIAN SUMMERFEST
2016

University of
Pittsburgh, Johnstown, PA, July 6-10.

NAVS North American
Vegetarian Society

I. NUTRITION, HEALTH

VEGETARIAN RECIPES

Free Arkansas Food & Farm, Food Issue 2016, picked
up at Harp’s, contains 19 pages of attractively illustrated veg recipes (except
for one with some bacon which can be omitted).
www.Arkansasfoodandfarm.com The
magazine is “brought to you by Arkansas
Times and Arkansas Grown” in “partnership with the Arkansas Agriculture
Department.”

Almost
all American Grains Are Contaminated with Glyphosate Herbicide

Glyphosate, the
main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is recognized as the world’s
most w...

Wiebe believes the use
of glyphosate on wheat may be connected to the rise in celiac disease. “We’ve
seen an explosion of gluten intolerance,” he
said. “What’s really going on?”

Charles Benbrook, Ph.D.,
who published the paper on the mounting use of glyphosate, says the practice of
spraying glyphosate on wheat prior to harvest, known as desiccating, began in
Scotland in the 1980s.

“Farmers there often had
trouble getting wheat and barley to dry evenly so they can start harvesting. So
they came up with the idea to kill the crop (with glyphosate) one to two weeks
before harvest to accelerate the drying down of the grain,” he said

Sprouts truly are the best locally-grown food,
yet not enough people eat or grow them. Considering their many health and
environmental benefits, it’s time to consider adding sprouts to your diet.

Sprouts truly are the best locally-grown food,
yet not enough people eat or grow them.

Here are 10 reasons to eat more sprouts:

1. Experts estimate that there can be up
to 100 times more enzymes in sprouts than uncooked fruits and
vegetables. Enzymes are special types of proteins that act as catalysts for
all your body’s functions. Extracting more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and
essential fatty acids from the foods you eat ensures that your body has the
nutritional building blocks of life to ensure every process works more
effectively.

2. The quality of the protein in the
beans, nuts, seeds or grains improves when it is sprouted. Proteins
change during the soaking and sprouting process, improving its nutritional
value. The amino acid lysine, for example, which is needed to prevent cold
sores and to maintain a healthy immune system increases
significantly during the sprouting process.

3. The fiber content of the beans,
nuts, seeds or grains increases substantially. Fiber is critical to weight loss. It not only binds to fats and
toxins in our body to escort them out, it ensures that any fat our body breaks
down is moved quickly out of the body before it can resorb through the walls of
the intestines (which is the main place for nutrient absorption into the
blood).

4. Vitamin content increases
dramatically. This is especially true of vitamins A, B-complex, C and E.
The vitamin content of some seeds, grains, beans or nuts increases by up to 20
times the original value within only a few days of sprouting. Research shows
that during the sprouting process mung beansprouts (or just beansprouts, as
they are often called) increase in vitamin B1 by up to 285 percent, vitamin
B2 by up to 515 percent and niacin by up to 256 percent.

5. Essential fatty acid content
increases during the sprouting process. Most of us are deficient in
these fat-burning essential fats because they are not common in our diet.
Eating more sprouts is an excellent way to get more of these important
nutrients.

6. During sprouting, minerals bind to
protein in the seed, grain, nut or bean, making them more useable in the body.
This is true of alkaline minerals like calcium, magnesium and others that help
us to balance our body chemistry for weight loss and better health.

7. Sprouts are the ultimate
locally-grown food. When you grow them yourself you are helping the
environment and ensuring that you are not getting unwanted pesticides, food
additives and other harmful fat-bolstering chemicals that thwart your weight
loss efforts.

8. The energy contained in
the seed, grain, nut or legume is ignited through soaking and sprouting.

9. Sprouts are alkalizing to your body.
Many illnesses including cancer have been
linked to excess acidity in the body.

10. Sprouts are inexpensive. People
frequently use the cost of healthy foods as an excuse for not eating healthy.
But, with sprouts being so cheap, there really is no excuse for not eating
healthier.

What's up Real farming and true food culture is what’s up,
in the first issue o

This is only a sample of the
advertising I received from this new magazine. --Dick

What's up

Nourish. Columnist Brooke Aksnes writes: ‘Now when I go to
buy meat or animal products, I look for locally grown, small-farm,
organic products, where fuel used on feed and product transport is
kept to a minimum and where humans and animals involved are treated
with dignity and respect. I play my own part in combatting climate
change while protecting those without voices in our societies.
Personal food choices have effects far beyond personal nutrition.
Also, however, there are times when it is not possible to eat up to
the highest standards because of politeness or practicality. Jonathan
Safran Foer sums this up: “Our response to the factory farm is
ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant,
to the voiceless – it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing
us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but
engagement with the problem is”.’

Join us please! Details of what this means and how to
get in touch with us are at the end of this NN.

A just-issued report
by The Cornucopia Institute summarizes research on the common food additive
carrageenan, exposing the industry’s hidden data demonstrating that all
food-grade carrageenan contains a carcinogenic contaminant—low molecular weight
poligeenan.

Carrageenan, harvested
from specific species of red seaweed, is a highly effective
thickener/stabilizer found in processed foods including infant formula,
plant-based beverages, deli meats, and some dairy products, including cream.
The controversy over carrageenan has existed between food industry
representatives and public health researchers for years, but it is now flaring
up again over its use in organic food.

Consequences of Consciousness: Sy Montgomery on
Human Treatment of Other Animals. Tuesday, 19 April 201 By Leslie Thatcher,
Truthout | Interview. Montgomery is
author of The Soul of an Octopus and The
Good Good Pig.

"The 2012 Cambridge Declaration on
Consciousness said all mammals and birds and octopuses specifically have the
neural substrates necessary to generate consciousness -- ultimately, the world
is far more alive, intelligent, thinking and feeling than we have wanted to
admit for a long time."

Consideration of other creatures' agency becomes
ever more urgent as we learn more about cognition across species. Now that we
absolutely know that lobsters can feel themselves being cooked to death, it
seems self-evident to me that we should never put a lobster in a pot of boiling
water, but many other people still feel their own pleasure in eating the
lobster is more important than the lobster's suffering -- a view grounded in
the long history of denial of other animals' sentience. In other instances,
what we do with what we know about animal consciousness seems more complex. The
forms our own empathy should take can be deeply at odds with current cultural
norms.

The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the
planet in the decades to come will be global climate disruption due to the
buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. People around
the world are beginning to address the problem by reducing their carbon
footprint through less consumption and better technology. But unsustainable
human population growth can overwhelm those efforts, leading us to conclude
that we not only need smaller footprints, but fewer feet.

Portland, Oregon, for example, decreased its combined per-capita
residential energy and car driving carbon footprint by 5 percent between 2000
and 2005. During this same period, however, its population grew by
8 percent.

A 2009 study of the relationship between
population growth and global warming determined that the “carbon legacy” of
just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save
by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and
light bulbs, etc. Each child born in the United States will add about 9,441
metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The
study concludes, “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are
huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.”

One of the study’s authors, Paul Murtaugh, warned that: “In
discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of
an individual over his or her lifetime. Those are important issues and it's
essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is
continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources. .
. . Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices
today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."

The size of the carbon legacy is closely tied to consumption
patterns. Under current conditions, a child born in the United States will be
responsible for almost seven times the carbon emissions of a child born in
China and 168 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

The globalization of the world economy, moreover, can mask the
true carbon footprint of individual nations. China, for example, recently
surpassed the United States to become the world’s leading greenhouse gas
emitter. But a large portion of those gases is emitted in the production of
consumer goods for the United States and Europe. Thus a large share of
“China’s” greenhouse gas footprint is actually the displaced footprint of
high-consumption western nations.

The United States has the largest population in the developed
world, and is the only developed nation experiencing significant population
growth: Its population may double before the end of the century. Its 300
million inhabitants produce greenhouse gases at a per-capita rate that is more
than double that of Europe, five times the global average, and more than 10
times the average of developing nations. The U.S. greenhouse gas contribution
is driven by a disastrous combination of high population, significant growth,
and massive (and rising) consumption levels, and thus far, lack of political
will to end our fossil-fuel addiction.

More than half of the U.S. population now lives in car-dependent
suburbs. Cumulatively, we drive 3 trillion miles each year.
The average miles traveled per capita is increasing rapidly, and the
transportation sector now accounts for one-third of all U.S. carbon emissions.

Another one-fifth of U.S. carbon emissions comes from the
residential sector. Average home sizes have increased dramatically in recent
decades, as has the accompanying footprint of each home. Suburban sprawl
contributes significantly to deforestation, reducing the capacity of the planet
to absorb the increased CO2 we emit. Due to a dramatic decrease in
household size, from 3.1 persons per home in 1970 to 2.6 in 2000, homebuilding
is outpacing the population growth that is driving it. More Americans are
driving farther to reach bigger homes with higher heating and cooling demands
and fewer people per household than ever before. All of these trends exacerbate
the carbon footprint inherent in the
basic energy needs of a burgeoning U.S. population.

Globally, recent research indicates that assumptions regarding
declining fertility rates used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
to develop future emissions scenarios may be overly optimistic. While fertility
rates have generally declined over the past few decades, progress has slowed in
recent years, especially in developing nations, largely due to cutbacks in
family planning assistance and political interference from the United States.
And even if fertility rates are reduced to below replacement levels, population
levels will continue to climb steeply for some time as people live longer and
billions of young people mature and proceed through their reproductive years.
Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions may drop, but the population bulge will
continue to contribute to a dangerous increase in greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere.

Time is short, but it not too late to stop runaway global
warming.Economy-wide reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions to a level that brings atmospheric CO2 back from 386
parts per million to 350 or less, scaling back first-world consumption patterns, and long-term population
reduction to ecologically sustainable levels will solve the global warming crisis
and move us to toward a healthier, more stable, post-fossil fuel, post-growth
addicted society. [I could not find the
date of this article. –Dick]

Since 2006, atmospheric
levels of methane — a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than
carbon dioxide over a 20-year period — have steadily been on the rise. For years, scientists weren’t sure what was behind the rising
levels of methane, but they had a few ideas: namely an increase in fossil
fuel-related emissions.

Now, a new study is pointing to a different culprit:
agriculture-related methane emissions, especially from livestock and rice
production.

Published last week in the journal Science,
researchers from New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric
Research (NIWA) found that the majority of methane released into the atmosphere
since 2006 was produced by bacteria, pointing to sources like agriculture —
rather than sources like fossil fuel production or the burning of organic
material — as the culprit behind the increase in methane levels.

A unique signature for
methane

The researchers were able to discern agricultural methane from
other sources of methane by looking at the gas’ isotopic signatures — or the
ratio of various carbon isotopes — using data from atmospheric monitoring
stations around the world. By looking at the distinct isotopic signatures, the
researchers could differentiate between methane produced from fracking, for
instance, and methane produced from agriculture, because they each have
different signatures.

The data also suggested that the increase in methane came from
regions including India, China and Southeast Asia, suggesting that the rise was
due to agriculture, not the growth of fracking in North America.

“That was a real surprise, because [around 2006] the U.S. started
fracking and we also know that the economy in Asia picked up again, and coal
mining increased,” NIWA atmospheric scientist Hinrich Schaefer told Phys.org.
“However, that is not reflected in the atmosphere.”

Livestock production in Asia has been expanding rapidly since
the middle of the 20th century, and is expected only to increase as economies
in the region become more developed.

Livestock production accounts for about 35 percent of total
anthropogenic methane emissions

Around the world, livestock production has been increasingly under
scrutiny in recent years, as animal agriculture’s carbon footprint has grown
clearer. Ruminants, like cows, produce methane as they digest their food,
through a process known as enteric fermentation. But livestock manure also
produces methane as it decomposes in closed-air containers known as lagoons,
which factory farming operations often use to store the massive amounts of
manure produced by their farms. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture
Organization estimates that livestock production accounts for some 2.2 billion
tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases annually, or about 35 percent of total anthropogenic methane
emissions.

But it’s not just livestock production that researchers say is
behind the rise in methane. Rice production is also a methane-intensive
activity, because root systems in rice plants secrete carbohydrates during
photosynthesis. When rice paddies are flooded, the oxygen-devoid environment
creates the perfect place for bacteria to feed off of those carbohydrates,
creating methane as a byproduct. That’s a problem, because rice is one of the
most important staple crops on Earth — more than 3.5 billion people depend on
rice for at least 20 percent of their daily caloric intake. In an effort to
curb rice’s methane production, scientists have actually been working to create
a lower-methane strain of rice (and have had some success).

But what about fossil
fuels?

Still, not everyone is convinced by NIWA’s analysis. Speaking
with InsideClimate News,
Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor who studies methane emissions,
said that the isotopic ratios in methane are too broad to confidently attribute
to a single source.

“When you have eight or nine or 10 different sources of methane,
each with a range of ratios, there is no way to calculate where it is coming
from,” he said. “If you had a little bit of melting of permafrost and a big
increase in natural gas production, you could get a pattern that these people
are interpreting as cows in India.”

Many otherstudies point
to an increase in fossil fuel production, especially oil and gas production in
the United States, as another key factor behind the recent increase in methane
production. A recent study conducted by climate scientists of Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT) found that as much as 40 percent of the recent
increase in methane could be due to fossil fuel production.

In a press release, the KIT scientists said that their findings
were actually congruent with the NIWA study, stressing that “increasing
emissions from the oil and natural gas sector, combined with emissions from
wetlands and maybe animal husbandry increasingly appear to have caused the
renewed increase in methane
concentration in the last decade.”

An unregulated industry

The Obama administration has taken some unprecedentedsteps in the
recent months to regulate methane from oil and gas production. Most recently,
the EPA announced that
it would begin regulating methane from existing oil and gas facilities, with
the ultimate goal of cutting methane from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45
percent below 2012 levels by 2025.

But methane from the
agricultural sector is still largely unregulated, despite the fact that
greenhouse gas-related emissions from livestock manure management systems grew 54 percent between
1990 and 2013.

Quite the opposite of imposing regulations on livestock producers
in the United States, Congress has actually explicitly forbidden the EPA from
collecting greenhouse gas emission data from livestock producers, making it the
only major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States that enjoys such an exemption.

“The EPA’s methane strategy is completely ignoring agriculture,”
Tarah Heinzen, an attorney with Food & Water Watch, told ThinkProgress.
“We’re not dealing with it as a regulatory issue as we are with other sources
of methane.”

Decarbonizing what we eat is just as important as decarbonizing
what we drive or what we use to heat our homes

California, which is one of the most livestock-heavy states in the
country, has made moves to begin regulating short-lived climate pollutants,
like methane. According to Brent Newell, legal director for the Center on Race,
Poverty & the Environment, methane from livestock accounts for about 5
percent of California’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The state’s Global
Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006, mandates that the state reduce its
greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent — and yet agriculture is the only sector
not subject to regulation.

In 2014, the California Senate mandated that the state’s Air
Resources Board (ARB) come up with a plan to regulate methane from livestock
operations. But thus far, the ARB has decided to achieve reductions only
through voluntary measures, which Newell argues allows the livestock industry
to effectively continue with a business-as-usual approach to methane
production.

“It’s acting like it’s doing something, it’s pretending like it’s
doing something, but voluntary controls for a massive greenhouse gas emitter is
a crazy regulatory response and it exemplifies the political power that the
dairy industry has over the Air Resources Board,” Newell said.

The plan is expected to be finalized later this month, when it
will be seen whether environmental groups’ calls for mandatory regulations for
the California livestock industry have been heard by the ARB, or whether such
calls have fallen on deaf ears.

“It is really shameful that this industry continues to enjoy an
exemption, while others are forced to comply,” Newell said. “Decarbonizing what
we eat is just as important as decarbonizing what we drive or what we use to
heat our homes.”